Judge Norman Atkinson

Norman Atkinson was born at Gatesville, Texas, on September 24, 1885, the son of H. N. and Lizzie M. Atkinson. He attended the public schools of Waco, spent three years at Baylor University, and received his law degree from the University of Texas in 1907. Having come to Houston in 1904, he began practicing law with his father and later partnered with Edward S. Boyles. He was County Judge of Harris County from 1927 to 1931, a trustee of the Houston public schools from 1932 to 1936, and Judge of the 11th District Court from 1937 until his death. Judge Kenneth McCalla called him “one of the best judges and one of the kindest men I ever knew.” He married Lillian Rose Hobbs in 1909, and they had a son.

He received his degrees in Gray Lodge in 1917: the Entered Apprentice on February 26, the Fellowcraft on April 6, and the Master Mason degree on May 10. After serving as Senior Deacon in 1918–1919, he was elected Junior Warden and then Senior Warden. When Worshipful Master Clifford E. Butler became unable to attend, Brother Atkinson presided over the lodge for six months before his own installation as the 50th Master in 1921 by Grand Junior Warden Gus A. Brandt.

No Master of Gray Lodge ever did more degree work. In his year the lodge raised 260 Master Masons, a record never approached in its first century; the next highest was 178. To keep pace, two degrees were conferred at once in two rooms. Membership passed 1,000 by the end of 1921, making Gray the largest lodge in Houston and the eighth largest in Texas. Even so, he worked to keep Gray “more than a mere degree mill,” once surprising the Brethren by calling from labor to refreshment for an hour of songs by the Gray Lodge Quartet.

His year also brought a stand of principle. In the fall of 1921 Grand Master Andrew L. Randell denounced the Ku Klux Klan’s false claims of ties to Freemasonry and ordered his letter read in every lodge. At Gray’s summoned meeting on October 13, 1921, with 677 members present, Worshipful Master Atkinson read the letter, and the lodge adopted the Grand Master’s views as its own, pledging “our unalterable opposition to any movement or organization which tends to injure Freemasonry, either from within or without our Order.”

The lodge also bought the northwest corner of Clay and Fannin for a new Temple with Temple Lodge No. 4, approved new lodges including Cade-Rothwell, Woodland, East Gate and Park Place, and raised funds for the Masonic Home. Brother Atkinson later served as Treasurer of the Gray-Temple Masonic Corporation and as District Deputy Grand Master in 1925.

He was a member of both the York and Scottish Rites, Ransford Chapter of the Eastern Star, the Elks, the Woodmen of the World and the Eagles, and he belonged to South Main Baptist Church. He died suddenly on June 14, 1943, after presiding over court that day, and was buried in Forest Park with Masonic rites by Gray Lodge.